At the time there were no printing presses and no paper. Instead, information circulated through the exchange of letters and other documents which were copied, commented on, and shared with others in the form of papyrus rolls. Cicero’s own correspondence, one of thebest-preserved collections of letters from the period, shows that he exchangedletters constantly with his friends elsewhere, keeping them up to date with thelatest political machinations, passing on items of interest from others, andproviding his own commentary and opinions. Letters were often copied, shared,and quoted in other letters. Some letters were addressed to several people andwere written to be read aloud, or to be posted in public for generalconsumption.

When Cicero or another politician made a noteworthy speech, he could distribute it by making copies available to his close associates, who would read it and pass it on to others. Many more people might then read the speech than had heard it being delivered. Books circulatedin a similar way, as sets of papyrus rolls passed from person to person. Anyonewho wished to retain a copy of a speech or book would have it transcribed byscribes before passing it on. Copies also circulated of the acta diurna(the “daily acts ,” or state gazette), the original of which was posted on aboard in the Forum in Rome each day and contained summaries of politicaldebates, proposals for new laws, announcements of births and deaths, the datesof public holidays, and other official information. As he departed for Cilicia,Cicero asked his friend and protégé Marcus Caelius Rufus to send him copies ofeach day’s gazette along with his letters. But this would be just part ofCicero’s information supply. “Others will write, many will bring me news, muchtoo will reach me even in the way of rumor,” Cicero wrote.

With information flitting from one correspondent to another, this informal system enabled information to penetrate to the farthest provinces within a few weeks at most. News from Rome took around five weeks to reach Britain in the west and seven weeks to reach Syriain the east. Merchants, soldiers, and officials in distant parts wouldcirculate information from the heart of the republic within their own socialcircles, sharing extracts from letters, speeches, or the state gazette withtheir friends and passing news and rumors from the frontier back to theircontacts in Rome. There was no formal postal service, so letters had to becarried by messengers or given to friends, traders, or travelers heading in theright direction. The result was that Cicero, along with other members of theRoman elite, was kept informed by a web of contacts— the members of his socialcircle — all of whom gathered, filtered, and distributed information for eachother.

This was the dawn of “social media” as we know it today, even though it wasn’t called that, or called anything at all. (Befittingly, though Standage doesn’t draw the connection, Cicero famously believed that if a word was absent from Greek society, it was because the thingit needed to describe had become so prevalent that people had stopped noticingits existence.) The platform on which it unfolded then was one of papyrusscrolls passed around by hand, but the mechanism of transmitting informationvia a human-powered network was analogous to anything we see on Facebook,Twitter, Tumblr, and platforms we’re yet to imagine.

To find the full posting, you will have to search around on the Brain Pickings website. This piece was posted on October 25, 2013.